The Pomp Podcast - #1479 Alex Smereczniak | How To Make Millions By Quitting Your Job

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

Alex Smereczniak is a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Franzy, a platform revolutionizing franchise discovery and acquisition. In this conversation, we talk about how you can own your own business, the success rate of franchises, timeline, risks, negotiating tips, impact on the US economy, and why you should use Franzy.  ======================== BitcoinOS is bringing Bitcoin into a new era. For the first time, Bitcoiners can access real DeFi across the entire crypto ecosystem, powered by revolutionary zero-knowledge technology. No more trusting sketchy bridges or giving up security. BitcoinOS reunites all of crypto around the chain where it all began. Follow BitcoinOS on twitter @BTC_OS and Be early to Bitcoin again. ======================= Polkadot is a scalable, secure, and decentralized blockchain technology aimed at creating Web3. Created by Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum, Polkadot empowers users to build decentralized applications with ease. Backed by industry leaders, making it a preferred choice for big names, Polkadot stands out as a leading choice for investors seeking a reliable, future-proof solution in the growing world of Web3 technology. Learn more at https://polkadot.com/. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ ======================= View 10k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Ever since President Trump was elected, everyone has got their eyes on small cap stocks in the public markets and small businesses in the private market. These businesses benefit when

there's lower interest rates and there's a pro business president in the White House. And so Alex is here to explain a brand new business that he is launching to help everyday Americans get into a better financial position by owning their own business, but without taking the risk of starting something completely from scratch. And so I'm super excited about this. I think you guys will really enjoy it. Here's my conversation with Alex Smirsnak. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular

strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Today's episode is brought to you by Bitcoin OS. Bitcoin OS is the ultimate upgrade to Bitcoin. Bitcoiners can now experience the magic of the entire crypto world, including DeFi, scalability, privacy, and more. But you don't have to give up control of your hard-earned sats. Bitcoin OS is powered by revolutionary zero-knowledge technology, and they let other blockchains plug into Bitcoin, offering their service to the world's largest digital asset. This lets Bitcoin holders securely move their coins across the crypto landscape, turning Bitcoin into a productive programmable asset. Putting your Bitcoin to work once meant

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perfectly aligns with the needs of innovative projects. It was developed by Gavin Wood, one of the co-founders of Ethereum and the creator of Solidity. Polkadot aims to build an internet where users have full control over their data and their applications. Polkadot offers tons of unique features, a shared security model, along with a new auction model and significant implementations like ASIC banking. Given these characteristics, it's easy to understand why Polkadot is gaining more and more traction in the cryptocurrency world. Some people even are talking about it as the AWS of Web3. Now, companies such as mythical games astro network and over 50 other independent blockchains with hundreds of

applications already leveraged polka dots technology to power their platforms if you're looking for a reliable scalable and cutting-edge solution polka dot seems to be the top choice for industry players go check them out today at polka dot.com all right alex so let's start with just i don't think many people understand how important it is for personal freedom financial liberty and independence, these small businesses are in America. How do you think about the small business? Maybe we could talk about how much money are these people making? And then what does their day look like compared to maybe working a nine to five or inside of some sort of corporate environment? Yeah. So I think the first thing I would say off the bat is that franchising represents

8% of our country's GDP. It's a massive amount of our economy. And it is the, I think, perfect embodiment of the American dream. I mean, you get to run your own business. You don't have to go into a nine to five that you hate. And so there is a ton of revenue generated, 800 billion a year in franchising in the United States alone. So this massive market that gives people that chance to be their own boss, chase their dreams, and again, be liberated from the nine to five. So depending on the concept that you get into, it could range from there's some where you can buy a bucket and a mop basically and go sell commercial cleaning

all the way up to groups that own hundreds of Jimmy John's and McDonald's and are generating tens of millions of dollars in EBITDA. And a lot of these people in these local communities, they're rich, right? Like I think people are like, oh, I want to go build a tech startup. Oh, I want to go to work in high finance, whatever.

Like most of the wealthy people growing up in North Carolina, they owned franchises, they owned local businesses. Like those were the rich people. It wasn't tech entrepreneurs or kind of people who worked in investment banking or anything. I mean, franchising is one of the backbones of, I think, our economy of America.

It gives you the chance to, again, make your own money, replace your income if you want to, and then have the upside to do even more than that. And so, you know, our story and what we got into was realizing that, you know, whether it's a laundromat, it's, you know, a fro-yo place, there's, again, there's something for everyone that they can jump into, whether it's a service business, a retail business, um, where they can replace their income or so much more than that. Talk about the success rate. Cause I think that's the most interesting thing, right? Is you and I have known each other for a long time. I invested in your last business,

which has gone very, very well. Um, for those that don't know, uh, I own a laundromat. Thanks to Alex. Uh, I'm in the laundry business. Thanks to Alex and, uh, uh, Dan and his whole team. Um, but the success rate of franchises is way higher than starting a business from scratch. So what are those numbers? Yeah. So over the first two years in the franchise industry, the success rate is 95% compared to an independent business. If you and I just start a car wash together randomly or a restaurant randomly together, it is 75%. So pretty big swing. The five-year success rate is even more astounding. For franchises, it's an 85% success rate compared to half of businesses failing that just start independently. So you have this

community of people that are backing you within franchising. You have a franchisor that has capital, has resources, has a team supporting you, and you're truly not going at it alone like a lot of independent operators would be. So you immediately have this playbook. And I think that's where a lot of people who want to break away, who have the dream to go start their own thing, but they're scared. They don't have the confidence. They're not sure where to start. Franchising is a really, really good business model to go and take that risk, but a calculated safer risk. One of the things that's interesting to me is when you go and do something, it's all about both the money you make and the time you invest, right?

Most of the people who are listening to this are Bitcoin investors. And so they really think about time. They have long time horizons. They think about their kind of proof of work. What is the thing they spend their time doing? What is the economic return that they get? And so in these franchise businesses, what is kind of the range in terms of how much money you see? And obviously, it depends on what the franchise is, the location, all that. But are we talking about people making like no money all the way up to like $10 million a year from a location or like what's that range look like? And then also how much time do you see people investing in this? Is this something where you can kind of hire a manager and they can run this, you know, once you're up and running and

kind of got it going well, or is this something where these people are working the cash register and they're basically running a small business? And the answer, you know, fortunately is that it is unique and there is such a wide range again. So there's some people that are making 50k a year in ebitda there's some that are making 100 million plus in ebitda that own massive amounts of locations um and same thing with the time commitment some out of the gate are very manager friendly where you could hire a you know pretty reasonably salaried salaried person to run the whole business for you and you get one two three open and you now have this mini empire in your in your city or geography um i'd say most businesses though the first year you have

to be involved. If you want to be different, if you want to be in that top 10% quartile of operators, of cashflow, et cetera, you need to be involved in the business, learn it that first year so that you know what to look for in a good manager, you know your business. But after year one, most franchises, I can't think of one that wouldn't require this or would need more than a year. You can hire a manager, you can become an owner, more passive at that point, or start working on your second and third and fourth and beyond. Okay. And then when somebody starts down this path, what are the things that they need to pay attention to in terms of finding a good franchise that they want to go work with, but also the right one for them? Yeah. So this is a big

reason we, you know, we're working on this platform. Frenzy is there isn't a lot of good resources right now. I've talked to hundreds of prospects. People are dying to get into a business, but they're googling things you know random brokers are coming up or just no information at all it's an ad for a chick-fil-a franchise because their seo team has dominated the you know the search um and so there hasn't been a good series of resources and so with the platform you can start to you know do a curated search on i have this much to invest i'm in this geography and i know i don't want a food concept because food and food inventory scares me and i want you know something else entirely and so then we curate and serve up a list the more that we learn about

you, the more accurate that curated list gets. As you find the thing that you want, we provide the lending, the financing, connect you to commercial real estate folks, all that stuff in one spot versus the alternative today, which is go through a broker, try to guess, come to a few dead ends, and ultimately stick with what s comfortable, which for a lot of people might be staying in the nine to five. Now, you and I know a lot about about franchising because you built a business that did not start out in franchising, but you began to franchise a bunch of models. I think you sold over 100 different franchises to various investors across the country. Talk a little bit about that experience of kind of understanding

it from, hey, you were the franchisor, right? And you were the one who was going out and kind of pitching people to come and work with you guys. And now you're kind of flipping around almost and helping from the other side. Yep. Yeah. So I knew nothing about franchising in 2020. I mean, COVID happened. Our business was all corporate-owned locations. We own a location together in Charlotte. And we realized to scale this the way that we want, at the level we want to, we need to open hundreds of laundromats. So either we need to raise hundreds of millions of dollars or we need to find another way. And franchising is a great way for entrepreneurs to scale as a franchisor. It's a great way to make money as a franchisee. And so we got into

world of franchising the advice that we kept getting was you're not in the laundromat business anymore you're in the franchise business and i didn't know what that meant until you know six months in and i realized we are a completely different business now we have to provide pretty sophisticated training to our franchisees marketing support for multiple locations and different personalities and geographies um operational support we're bulk you know purchasing and negotiating equipment deals on behalf of our franchisees in that instance and it does shift a lot from hey an operating entity that runs laundromats to now this full suite of you know support tools and systems for uh franchisees um so it is drastically different

um and when we got into the franchise sales process that's when you know my eyes really lit up is you've got 4 000 franchise brands in the country 3 000 of which are considered emerging brands meaning they're less than 100 locations open and so this isn't your mcdonald's wendy's Chick-fil-A's, but it is the 75% majority of these brands. They do not have the resources to have sophisticated marketing, training, et cetera. And so they're leveraging a lot of kind of pay to play or paid on success consultants and contractors. And especially on the sales side, they're working with brokers and what are called FSOs, franchise sales organizations. The FSO essentially acts as your external third-party sales arm.

They've got the laundry lab polo on or the franchise or polo on the email, and they're working with prospects to make sure it's a good fit mutually for everyone involved. And they're doing a lot of work, but they get paid a 30% to 50% commission of the franchise fee. Again, as an emerging brand, you and I start a gym. We might not have a sales team. We don't have the resources to do that. This is a beneficial thing for that situation.

but then there's the first like two to three steps of the development of the franchise sales process and that is discovery it's finding the right brand educating yourself on franchising making sure it's a good fit making sure it's available and then making sure that you're qualified that's where franchise brokers come in and the thing that kind of um you know felt misaligned for me at least as a franchisor was these brokers will take a 60 commission in most cases of that franchise fee. And so I was seeing our FSO team making 30 to 50%, but doing a ton of work and acting as though they're a full-time team member of ours. And then I'd see brokers come in with a handful of phone calls and educating their clients and taking, again, the lion's share of

that commission. And that's where I thought there has to be a productized way or more modernized way to make the brand and the prospect both better off in the driver's seat. How does the product work right now? Yeah. So you'd come to similar to Zillow, what they did to MLS and real estate and what Expedia has done to travel. You can go to this website and you can say, Hey, I'm in New York city. I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina, wherever you are, I've got 200 K to invest. I know that I'm passionate about these things. I have this much time to give. I have this much experience managing employees. And then we're leveraging a mixture of AI, but just also this massive robust data set that we've

built to curate and recommend brands to you that are truly the best fit. So one of the things that a broker does is supposed to match you with brands and they do do a good job of this. One of the areas where it's misaligned again is they might only be showing you brands that have paid to play in the background. And this is never legally disclosed to you because there's no licensure requirements, which is crazy. You have to have a real estate license to sell a home, half a million dollar home, but you need no license to sell a million dollar business. and so our product is taking away some of that misalignment and truly curating things that fit your financial readiness your operational experience your hobbies and interests and

then what your life goals are so we're taking that information we curate the list we then give you research tools to compare the ones that come up across multiple concepts we've partnered with lenders to get you pre-qualified and get you financing we've partnered with cpas business formation you know startups and entities all the things that you need basically a one-stop shop to to buy a business and then we introduce you to those brands once you're ready we know that you're qualified and you run through their process which they have well defined they have internal sales teams or they're working with an fso and that's where you truly build the relationship and the rapport and our goal is to then you know put more of that franchise fee back into the franchisors

pockets because if they have that money it's ultimately going to lead to more franchisees success because they now have the resources to build a proper training program, build proper marketing, build all the resources you need to support those franchisees and being successful. What is the pitch for the franchisor to come onto this platform? Is that, hey, we're going to help you find great qualified franchisees? It has been one of the easiest conversations I've ever had because it's no money up front for them. It's not a monthly subscription. It's not a SaaS product. They only have to pay if we are successful in finding them a qualified prospect that becomes a franchisee. And so

they're all, you know, very eager and excited to try it because we are a more affordable tech forward, robust, full service offering than what they're working with today at a cheaper price point. And as people come into this platform, what is like the time, right? I think a lot of people, so, okay. Somebody's listening to this right now. They say, Hey, I think I want to be in the franchise business. I got the cash. I got the interest. I got time to do it, whatever. I go, I look, how long is it going to take until I'm actually up and operational? Can you walk through that timeline of, you know, I get on the website right now. When am I in business? Yep. So all the way to the beginning, let's say you have a terrible day at work one day and you're

like, you know what? This is the year I buy a business. That's probably how it starts. You go to Google franchise opportunities to buy in 2024 or 2025. And what ends up happening is like Chick-fil-A comes up, McDonald's comes up because they've got massive in-house SEO teams again and so they come up first there's a few articles that'll show up next but there's no there's no natural landing spot to go there isn't a lot of helpful resources you might end up finding your way to a broker at that point um which again there's a lot of brokers i know that are phenomenally helpful there's others that again you have to do your your homework just like you would in any purchasing process um but for franzy let's say that comes up now this time

you know as we launch you can start doing your research you figure out what you can afford you you get pre-qualified from a lender. This could take a day to do this part if you're really eager and ready to go. This could be you passively looking for six to 12 months. But once you find that brand, the average sales cycle is about 90 to 120 days. That's once you connect with the brand, you know you can afford it, you know it's available, you know you like it, you're interested. It takes the 90 to 120 days because you are doing research, you're talking to existing franchisees of that brand it's called brand validation you're going through what's called a business overview call and then a uem a unit economic model call is next to see

down to the detail what's the average price for paying employees at these locations what's the average cost of you know froyo mix if it's a froyo franchise you're doing all that detailed model research then you're talking to existing franchisees then you do what's called a discovery day it's where you fly out in person you meet the whole team that's going to support you you see the business in action and that's kind of the go or no go are we you know we've been dating for a little while now are we getting married or we calling it off if you decide to become a franchisee if it's a retail business that could take another six to you know 12 6 to 18 months for some concepts to find the right site it's the most important decision you make in a retail concept is finding

that perfect site um and if it's a service-based business you could be up and running in you know two months. It's just training at that point and getting familiar with the business and getting your team built out if you have to build a team and getting it off the ground. What are the biggest risks to going the franchise route versus another route? Yeah, so I think the biggest risks are if it's a retail-based one, it's picking the wrong location and the customer base isn't there or that area evolves so much that the customer base is no longer there because you can't move the box, right? If you've got all sorts of equipment and construction costs into it you're basically starting over again so i think on a retail

franchise you have to get the site right which is why that process takes so long as you you have to be very analytical and again this is where franchisors help you if you're scared of this part franchisors have a team have resources to make sure that that part's de-risked if it's a territory-based concept like let's say home services fencing gutters moving etc it's kind of like any other business competition coming in And there is some risk if you get too early with a franchisor that they aren't fully set up yet. They don't have the resources and the team, et cetera, to support you fully.

There's some risk there, but then it just becomes the same risk of almost you doing it on your own. Only this case, you do have some people still supporting you and helping you. So competition, franchisors that are too early, and then just changing kind of consumer sentiment or demand in that area. How much of this is buying new ones versus buying existing ones, right? And are there pros and cons or how do you think about if I've never run a franchise before, which one should I be leaning towards or how would I evaluate that? So it kind of depends again. So with

Franzy, we're starting with brand new DeNovo units. The reason being is every franchise has to fill out what's called an FDD, a franchise disclosure document. It's required by the FTC. those have audited financials in it, audited startup costs. So you know that everything's been validated by some sort of audit process and a government regulatory process. So we like that because there's no risk of the information that we have being off. Whereas other platforms that exist today, it's kind of a cesspool. There's random stuff. I can go create a listing right now with completely fake information and there's no vetting really on these platforms. So from a franzy in a platform perspective, we're starting with new. Our goal is to get to a point where

we're doing resales of existing franchises. We're doing resales of other offline independent businesses, not too dissimilar to what Acquire.com is doing now with SaaS businesses. But today, 15,000 brand new franchise locations open every year. I'd say about 10,000 or so existing units sell every year. And so you have a mixture of both. It just depends if you want to get going quicker and you have the capital to buy existing, or if you want to land and expand into a new city, new concept, and you want that upside of, I want to own 10 of these units someday, going new is usually a faster, cheaper way to do that. And then how should people think about when negotiating with these franchisors?

What are the tips and tricks? One of the things I always tell technology founders is every time you get a bill from the lawyer, it's negotiable, right? And many entrepreneurs know that because they've been in business before and they've kind of experienced it. But for the first time, entrepreneurs are always like, wait, what? I just thought you get the bill, you got to pay it. No, it's negotiable, right? Like go and talk about it.

And so what are some of those types of tips and tricks for negotiating originally with the franchisor or things that are kind of levers people can pull to make sure they get a good deal? So the first piece of advice is get a good franchise attorney to look at it. It's not going to cost you an arm and a leg. it is reasonable. And the franchise disclosure document is a 200 page legal document that is incredibly onerous and complicated. And so I would first get a franchise attorney because other attorneys are going to look at this. And if they don't know franchising, they're going to rip it apart because it is so brand friendly. It is very franchisor friendly. But part of that is because the power of a franchise business is that whole system, that whole network. And they might need

you to order from a certain vendor. They might need you to follow a certain process for a very specific reason, because it ultimately protects your brand, the whole brand. And they've trialed and errored their way into that process. And it prevents new people coming in saying, well, I want to do it this way instead, even though they've already tried that way seven times and it hurt the brand. And so it comes off as very one-sided at first. And I think only franchise attorneys understand, hey, some of these things need to be this way because it protects the whole system long-term. So it's just one explanation and one tip. But to your point, everything is negotiable, especially with early brands where the risk that you're taking on as

a franchisee is higher. You can negotiate deferred royalties. So most of franchising works this way. They take 6% to 10% of the top line revenue as their royalty fee. Early brands will give concessions on, hey, it's zero until you are a year in or until you're profitable. And then we go to 3% from there, and then we go to 6%. But if you don't ask for it, might not get that so make sure that you're negotiating your royalties um you can negotiate your training being uh accredited and not having to pay an extra fee for training or travel you can negotiate certain marketing programs with brands as well so definitely negotiate those things as far as royalty other one-time costs or payments for training marketing etc but then

also just be cognizant that the franchise system is set up this way intentionally to protect the the whole system. And what are some of the success stories that you guys have seen on the franchise side? Like you guys sold over a hundred franchises, I think, in the laundry business. Like what were the things that those people did starting out? Was it just like they're focused on a full time? Were there certain things that came with a team? Did they allocate more money than what was originally required? Like what were just kind of the commonalities of the people who have been super successful? The main theme I'd say is good partners. I think like any business, whether it's a franchise or not we have you know we understand all of our pros and our strengths

and our weaknesses and so the ones that had a very high level and degree of self-awareness but also empathy and just understanding you know what they're good at what we're good at what we're not good at what they're you know what they're not good at um it worked really well because we had this very dynamic flexible fluid partnership um the individuals are really obsessed and focused a lot on their site selection again the site matters so much because we were a retail concept have done really well and then the last and i think probably most important thing is that first year there's there was no ego and people were in the business every day they did whatever it took jason williams gave me this feedback i remember one time um he's like i go clean the bathroom

every thursday and i make sure the whole team sees me they had that kind of attitude of like i don't care what the job is i'm gonna do it and i'm gonna do it with a smile on my face because it's a learning opportunity it's a way for me to understand this business and you know earn your way into it. There isn't a shortcut and franchising is no different. Even though it's de-risked, you still have to put in the hours. You still got to roll up your sleeves. You got to understand the business at least in the first year. How impactful can this be for the US economy? Trump just got elected as president. I think people are very excited about lower interest rates. They're pouring capital into small cap stocks. I think that small businesses are kind

of the private market version of that. What do you guys kind of see as the outlook for these types of businesses? And then what's the impact on the economy? I think it's huge. Again, today, it's already 8% of the GDP and it's growing at double digit percentages year over year. It is a massive booming part of our economy because it represents hotels, food, services, business, you name it, franchising probably touches it in some capacity. And again, it gives that springboard for people that don't have this completely original idea or the capital or the resources is from a partnership perspective, it gives them a safer environment, de-risked environment to become an entrepreneur, to become a business owner. And so I think the timing lines up perfectly. I

mean, with the outcome of this election, we have a very pro-business president in the White House now. I think rates are going to continue to come down. There's going to be more favorable policy for business owners and operators. And I think franchising is poised to take advantage of that. you also have what's called the silver tsunami, all the baby boomers retiring. There's going to be $10 to $15 trillion in assets that are transferred to the next generation. And so you have this group of individuals flush with cash, ready to either invest in crypto, in equities, or in becoming their own bosses and buying their own businesses. And a huge chunk of that group is going to become franchisees. I think it's the perfect timing for all of this.

and on top of it, I think there's new asset classes being developed. We're talking about doing it with Franzy is maybe you want exposure to franchising as an asset class, but you don't want to operate at all. It's just out of the cards for you. But could you own 10% of a group that owns 50 Jimmy John's and we fractionalize and syndicate basically deals and we handpick the best operators based on the data that we've been collecting on individuals and brands on our platform and handpick the best operators with the right concept and then go raise the multi-million dollars that's needed to open those locations from private investors. When you're building this, what are things that you've done on the platform that are explicitly

linked to your experience on the franchisor side? What are some of the things that, yes, there aren't platforms that specifically do this, but you mentioned the fee. These other brokers are taking outrageous fees, so you switch that. What are the other things that you think you've done that align yourself? Somebody's watching this like, okay, cool. You got some opportunities on here. But like, how do I know you're on my side, right? How do I know that you're actually looking out for me? Yep. Because I think for any platform to work, you have to reduce friction on both the supply and the demand side, and then create incremental value. If you don't do either of those things, the platform's dead in the water. So on the supply side, we're having so much luck

because, hey, there's no commitment. There's no initiation fee, which a lot of broker networks do. So the brands are excited to come on because it's, again, low friction. We only get paid if there's incremental value for them. So they get prospects. It's free for the prospect forever. You have this incredibly rich data set. You have all these tools, this one-stop shop to buy a business. So another differentiator for us is this pre-qualification. We're partnering with lenders that love franchising, that are familiar with it. Especially if it's an SBA-approved franchise, it makes the process that much quicker.

And so inserting them into this process early on, you now know what you can afford quickly versus wasting all this time, spending all this time. So that's a big element. Talking to a coach is another element that we have on the platform. to make sure that you are getting to the right concept. And so our whole revenue model and how we pay our team internally as well is not a percentage of the commission because that naturally creates bias, right? If there's a franchise fee that's 80K versus one that has a 30K franchise fee, brokers are going to naturally want to sell the 80K one because

if they're getting 50% of that fee, it's double what they would have made on the other one. So we take a flat dollar amount for everything and we pay our team a flat dollar amount as well. So it doesn't matter what the brand is. It's truly what's the right fit for Anthony. That's for iteration one. That's for this initial product we're launching here in the next couple of weeks. For future iterations, I think we are opening up opportunities that are really hard to come by for a massive subset of the US population.

And those are your guys that have run three McDonald's their whole lives. They've run five Jimmy John's. They've been in the trenches managing a team of hourly employees, but they still don't have enough capital to be that owner and have equity, Franze is going to create this new segment that I don't think exists fully today to say, hey, we're going to pair you operator with the capital and you've now earned yourself 20% to 50% of sweat equity because these capital partners, they don't want to operate and they're willing to give up some of that ownership to get the best operators possible, making this thing turnkey for them as stress-free as possible.

It's almost like a talent component to it as well that over time you think you can build out and really kind of help people find the right partners on top of finding the right franchise. I am very bullish on that part because at Laundry Lab, again, firsthand experience, we had some phenomenal operators come through. They would have been some of the best operators in our system today. They just didn't have the net worth or liquidity requirements and telling them no is one of the most painful things you could experience because you could see the passion, you could see how skilled they were. They just didn't have the money and we didn't have the money to back them personally as we would have. So I think there's an element where

Franzy can also eventually start backing and handpicking our own operators as well as syndicating those deals. And conversely, on the capital side, I can't tell you how many people I've met that said, I want exposure to franchising, but I don't want to go through the process and training and marketing and dealing with all that. And so this idea of kind of what you've seen in real estate before and just syndicating and doing fractional shares of a franchise business, it doesn't exist today. And I don't know why it doesn't exist today. What's been the most fun part so far? the second time around just feels like a video game on you know the cheat code you know you've got the network built out already I know a lot of people in

franchising we have got a lot of great investors mentors etc that were there lined up ready to go so everything's just faster everything goes faster you've you've made all these mistakes the first you know eight years on this first thing that you're not gonna make again on the next one and what I personally get really excited about is enabling this generation of this group of entrepreneurs you know part of our core net our mission is we want to create and empower one million entrepreneurs and you can attest to this i mean i have not had a more fulfilling experience better self-learning growth etc than i have been an entrepreneur it's the best thing i think anyone could ever do if you really

want to push yourself and continue to grow and challenge yourself i learned more doing a laundry business in college than any class I did at that college, not because the classes were bad, but because nothing can replicate hands-on, get in the trenches, learn marketing, learn operations, fail, try something else. And I think Franzy is going to be a platform that helps a lot of people get comfortable doing that. I love it. Where can we send people to find it? Do what? Where can we send people to find the So the website is www.franzi.com, F-R-A-N-Z-Y. And again, we've got a ton of data, a ton of resources, 3,000 brands worth of information, all at your fingertips, ready to go, be explored. The name, obviously Fran is franchised, but where did the Z-Y come from?

The honest answer is it was a two-syllable name that had a domain available. That's a good answer though. That's a great answer. So it was available. It was affordable. It has the nod to franchising. Easy to remember, easy to say. Frenzy. Everyone will remember it at one point. I'm hoping that people are at the bar and people are complaining about, you know, I'm ready to leave my job. I don't know where to start. And someone's like, dude, you got to go check out Frenzy. They've got businesses listing for days and you can talk

to a coach and they've got financing and they've got everything. Somebody watching this right now is going to do it this weekend. And when they do, do, I want you to take a video of you telling your friend, go check out Franzy and you send it to me and I'll post it if somebody sends me the video. All right. Thank you so much for doing this. We'll do it again in the future. Yep. Thank you for having me.